Soil and plant fertilizers or plant foods are essential to healthy plants and gardens. Ensuring plants receive the proper amount of nutrients at the proper time remains an important task of all plant caretakers. Technology in this field is ever-growing and there exists a plethora of synthetic fertilizers in the market today. However, recent trends have brought many consumers back to more natural ways of fertilizing their plants with organic fertilizers or plant foods. Common types of organic fertilizers/plant foods include manure, compost, bone meal, blood meal, worm castings, and fish extracts.
Besides the appeal of organic fertilizers sounding “good for the earth” or “natural,” the appeal of organic fertilizers over synthetic ones is not in the types of nutrients the fertilizer provides. The benefits of organic fertilizers/plant food come from both the timing in which the nutrients are available to plants, and the soil structure from natural processes occurring. The plants absorb beneficial nutrients and microbes through their root system. Improved root system health to facilitate nutrient uptake, and optimized nutrient availability are important factors to improved plant health and growth outcomes.
Soil contains many microorganisms that are constantly working to break down organic matter. Whether you use synthetic or organic fertilizer, these microorganisms are already present in the soil. As these microorganisms break down the organic matter in soil, they release nutrients that the plants are now able to absorb through their roots. It is this constant process that provides the plants with a steady stream of nutrients in a form plants can use. Synthetic fertilizers are limited to the nutrients contained within the substance and have no way of producing a constant stream of nutrients for the plants without reapplication.
Furthermore, the natural process of microorganisms breaking down organic material provides for ideal soil structure for root systems. The constant process involves microorganisms eating the organic material, defecating, and dying. This creates a viscous material that clings to the soil granules to form larger clusters. These clusters create an air-space in the soil layer for water to enter or for roots to develop and expand. Synthetic fertilizers do not provide organic matter to the soil for these microorganisms to consume and, thus, do not enhance the soil structure around the root system of plants.
Synthetic fertilizers also have the potential to provide too much or too little nutrients to the plant system. Plants typically require 13 different nutrients. The three primary nutrients that plants need the most of are nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium (NPK). Most synthetic fertilizers only focus on NPK levels and disregard the other 10 nutrients plants need. The other 10 nutrients plants need are calcium, magnesium, sulfur, boron, copper, iron, chloride, manganese, molybdenum, and zinc. Organic fertilizer is constantly replenishing and providing the nutrients plants need, not just NPK. For example, proteins contain a good source of iron. However, the plant cannot absorb an iron molecule trapped inside a protein. The microorganisms can break down the protein to release the iron in a state usable by the plant. Synthetic fertilizers contain no such process and plants are limited to only those additional nutrients already contained in the soil. Moreover, synthetic fertilizers are subject to leeching from rain water or other underground water-level activity.
Although plants need 13 essential nutrients, obtaining too much of these nutrients can be toxic. The danger with synthetic fertilizers lies in the high concentration of nutrients contained therein. If not properly applied to the soil, the plant may intake too many nutrients and start to deteriorate if not die completely. The natural process provided by organic fertilizer reduces this risk significantly.
One downfall of organic fertilizer is the lack of readily available nutrients at first use. Since organic fertilizers/plant foods rely on microorganisms to break down organic material into smaller nutrient pieces that the plants can intake, this process could take a little while before noticeable results occur. Additionally, time is needed to enhance the soil structure surrounding plant roots. There exists a need for an organic fertilizer/plant food that can quickly provide nutrients to plants and increase soil structure without increasing the risk of toxic overdose to plants. The present invention is designed to overcome this problem.
An exemplary embodiment of the invention will include the ingredient of molasses as an addition to organic fertilizers/plant foods. Molasses is an organic byproduct from the manufacturing process of turning sugarcane or sugar beets into sugar. To make molasses, juice is extracted from sugarcane or sugar beets typically by mashing or crushing. This juice is then brought to a boil which concentrates the liquid, allowing for crystallization to occur. The sugar crystals are removed, and the remaining syrup is molasses. This process can be repeated several times resulting in different types of molasses with varying degrees of refinement.
Since the molasses comes from a plant product itself, sugarcane or sugar beet, molasses contains many essential nutrients that plants need. In addition, molasses mostly consists of sugars which provide a perfect food for microorganisms to feast on. This increased microbial growth is beneficial to the plant root system. The resulting improved root system leads to improved health and growth outcomes for the plant.
These sugars are easier for the microorganisms to process than other organic material found in fertilizers or nature, such as bark, bone meal, manure, or leaves. By adding molasses to a fertilizer/plant food, the microorganisms will quickly begin processing the sugar resulting in incredible microorganism growth and reproduction. Some bacteria can double in population in as little as 20 minutes provided conditions are ideal. Adding molasses to the soil brings the soil environment closer to an ideal state for microorganism growth and reproduction by providing more food that can quickly be processed.
Eventually, the microorganisms will run out of sugars to eat and will have to transition back to processing the other organic material much more slowly. Many of the new microorganisms will die off because food is not as abundant as it was when molasses sugars were in the system. Although adding molasses to the process does not submit to a long-term sustainable environment, the regular organic fertilizer/plant food fills in that void. The molasses merely provides a boost at the initial addition of the fertilizer, solving the problem with current organic fertilizers today. The increased microorganism activity promotes the processing of the organic materials, sugar from molasses, into readily usable nutrients for plant consumption. Furthermore, the increased microorganism activity results in better clustering of the soil, as described above, to promote root development and access to water.
This initial added benefit comes from the addition of sugar to the organic fertilizer/plant food that may not be specific to the sugars in molasses. Other embodiments of the invention will involve adding other organic substances containing sugar to organic fertilizer/plant food, including but not limited to, honey, maple syrup, crystalized sugar, fruit juices, etc.
In addition to the high sugar content of molasses, molasses provides for other benefits as an addition to organic fertilizer. Molasses is known to have excellent chelating properties. Chelation is a type of bonding that attaches two molecules to a central ion. Here, the central ion is often a nutrient that plants need, such as iron or magnesium. This chelation bonding puts the nutrient in a form easily absorbed by the plant.
Molasses also contains many of the nutrients plants need. As a byproduct coming from plants themselves, molasses contains, among other nutrients, calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorous, potassium, and zinc. These nutrients replenish the soil and may be absorbed by the plant. These nutrients are largely already in a form that the plant can intake without processing by microorganisms.
While molasses has many benefits to assist in plant growth and soil development, it is important to not add too much molasses. Adding too much molasses to a fertilizer could lead to an influx of nutrients available to the plants risking a toxic amount of absorption. Moreover, microorganisms will respond to their environment and keep multiplying and growing to adapt to the large amount of molasses added. While this may help soil structure, this largely does nothing for the long-term nutrients the plants need. Any excess nutrients remaining in the soil could be leeched away by rain water, providing no help to the plants or soil system. As a result, there is a maximum amount of molasses that can benefit the plants and soil system without becoming, at best wasteful, and, at worst, harmful to the plants. The space the excess molasses would fill would be better occupied by another organic material with a longer break down period for microorganisms, thus, providing sustainable nutrients the molasses could not.
The sugar and nutritional composition of any given molasses can vary depending on multiple factors, for example, how many levels of refinement has the molasses gone through, whether the base came from sugar beets or sugarcane, the strain of sugar beet or sugarcane the molasses came from, etc. However, it is not uncommon for a molasses to have a composition as follows:
ComponentPercent by weight (%)Sugars65-85Vitamins0-1Minerals0.5-4  Calcium0.001-0.5 Iron0.001-0.01 Magnesium0.1-0.5Manganese0.001-0.01 Phosphorous0.01-0.1 Potassium1-3Sodium0.01-0.1 Zinc0.0001-0.001 Water15-25The above percentages are meant to depict an example of what the composition of molasses may look like but in no way should be interpreted to limit the present invention to only molasses with the above characteristics.